Post navigation

Way back in 1986, the Worlds End shop had just opened again after being closed for nearly 18 months. It had been closed because Vivienne’s business had been going through a difficult yet transformative period in which she had finally finished all business ties with Malcolm McLaren,had been living in Italy, met future business manager Carlo D’Amario & had been working on the designs for what was going to be the Mini Crini collection. She had then gone to New York & shown the collection there.When she came back to London, the only people working for her were myself, my brother Joe, Carlo’s girlfriend Jeb & my grandmother Dora.At this time I was also taking up photography & Vivienne asked me to take some pictures of some new items she was working on.Two of them are shown here.The girl on the steps of Worlds End is a glamorous neighbour we had at the time called Mandy.She is wearing a white round collared shirt (no orb embroidered on it yet, that was still to be developed) & one of the alternative crini skirts Vivienne was designing at the time. This skirt was a lot longer than the mini crini & was made in city stripe suiting (mentioning this, Vivienne was also making these same skirts out of the denim from cut up Levi jeans, patched together).In the second photo are two friends from the time. On the left is Jane Francis, commonly known as Minnie who was going out with another friend of mine, Oleh Witer the creator of an Australian band called Big Pig (Oleh modelled in the Time Machine fashion show). Minnie later worked at Westwood for several years.The girl on the right is Rosemary Turner who did the door at Philip Salon’s nightclub, the Mud Club.Here they both are on the Kings Road having a portion of chips.Minnie wears a sample dress & Rosemary wears a mini crini outfit & star belt.

Symbolising power to the people, this week’s post is to recommend & illustrate how to make your own crown. A democratic crown.
How to make the one illustrated above in the photo by Juergen Teller is already on this site. Click on ’Do It Yourself’ above.
There is a second version you can also make. Instructions here.
This version was made for the recent London Unisex fashion show, AW 2016/17, which was named after the green energy supplier Ecotricity & was also worn at the Fabric nightclub event in London on the 20th Feb.
Read about the night here.

This week Worlds End has a new scarf/shawl in 100% lambswool, 270 cm long by 75cm wide. I have previously written about the manufacture, history & quality of this accessory here.

The current version is in 5 colours & sports several slogans all connected with the rotten financial system we currently live under & it’s responsibility for austerity measures, poverty & climate change.
This financial system allows one million, of what Vivienne has coined the ‘antipeople’, to control the rest of the seven billion of us on this planet, acting the same as a parasite in that they suck up all profit from the works of others & like a parasite they eventually kill the host – us!
(have you switched your energy supplier yet to a green one?).
At the end of the scarf are the words:
“Friends of Oxfam oppose Rotten Financial System = Rot $
Soon nobody will be able to help anybody/global”.
This wording is addressed specifically to Oxfam but also to the other NGO’s & their supporters addressing the rape of our planet & the suffering of its inhabitants, i.e Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the RSPB, etc.
What the wording explains is that the world situation is getting worse & worse & the work of these organisations although helping a bit is fighting a losing cause. It is a call for them & all of their supporters (of which we are one) to realise that they need to ‘up’ their game & get more politically opposed to the root cause of their fight. The rotten financial system.
These NGO’s have a lot of supporters. They need to start co-ordinated actions, like for instance urging their members to all switch energy suppliers away from the fossil fuel industries.
Some of these NGO’s receive funding from the UK government, which complicates any direct criticism. If these NGO’s don’t come out against the government though, their causes are lost.

Perfect for the troubled times we live in, we introduce the new, exclusive Worlds End Activist dress…
Modeled by Sandy, a pattern cutter & tailor here in the Westwood design studio, she shows how you can be sexy & political at the same time. Continue reading →

First published in 1909, ‘The Machine Stops’ is a short science fiction story written by E.M.Forster, better known for novels like ‘A Passage to India’.In it he describes a world run for pleasure by a machine. Through the generations, people rely more & more on the machine until they do nothing without it. They don’t even try to do anything not provided by it. The machine becomes almost a new religion.Then, although the people don’t understand this, the machine starts to break.During its collapse & before the machine does break completely, the people keep making excuses for the machine’s behavior.When the machine does stop, civilization totally collapses & the human race becomes virtually extinct.
Vivienne has picked up on this story as the exact metaphor for our own situation today.One example of this is our complete reliance on fossil fuel energy which is imminently going to kill most of us through climate change.

Last July whilst I was interviewing Jordan for this blog she told me that I should look into what her nephew Alwyn Craven was doing with the family farm they owned in North Yorkshire.Rather than continuing to farm on the land he had instead decided to convert it back into a natural environment for wildlife, bees, trees & flowers.Continue reading →